March 1st Movement

The March 1st Movement was a Korean independence movement that launched demonstrations against Japanese rule on 1 March 1919. After the suspicious death of Gojong of Korea on 21 January 1919, Korean nationalists drafted a declaration of independence, which was read aloud at the Taehwagwan Restaurant in Seoul on 1 March 1919. The movement leaders then sent the letter to the Governor-General of Korea and turned themselves in to the police, who detained them for their nationalism. The movement would go on to read the declaration in several places across the country, and 2,000,000 Koreans took part in 1,500 demonstrations across the country. The Imperial Japanese Army and police force massacred 7,509 people, injured 15,849, and arrested 46,303, while 8 Japanese soldiers and policemen were killed and 158 wounded. The movement provided a catalyst for the Korean independence movement, and the Japanese government admitted wrongdoing, replacing Governor-General Hasegawa Yoshimichi with Makoto Saito and replacing the military police with a civilian police force.